Weapons, words, and code - all means of changing reality. All, however, are sharp tools in that not only can they turn in your hands, but they'll do exactly what you tell them to - even if that's not what you meant.

September 11, 2006

A Technology I Mused About

A while back, I mused about how to secure a video stream against tampering or modification. I was concerned with the production end; that is, with making changes to the actual video which would provide proof of integrity as well as other metadata for legal use later.

Others who are actually qualified have been working on this problem. This gentleman has been approaching from the other end, that of forensic examination of unmodified data; at the moment, his work involves still imagery but he appears to be moving into video.

So there is interest in proving video (un)modified. I will acknowledge that the applications are much larger when applied to 'standard' video. Still, I can't help thinking that if there is enough doubt to create this field of study, then a 'verified video stream' might be worthwhile.